UCLA Presents Post Performance Discussion Of IVANOV On 12/6

There will be a post performance discussion on December 6 with company members, and director Dimiter Gotscheff. Moderated by renowned translator and UCLA Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, Michael Heim. The exclusive United States production of Berlin's most prominent and revolutionary theatre, The Volksbühne, will be presented by David Sefton's UCLA Live's Seventh International Theatre Festival in a controversial production of Chekhov's first play, IVANOV, under the direction of Bulgarian born Dimiter Gotscheff. The play will be performed in German with English supertitles.

Gotscheff's IVANOV is a tale of existential despair. His staging reduces the play to its essential, doing without the visual elements that are synonyms of Chekhov's world: white linen suits, samovars and tea cups. It is not about the ennui of a rich society, but about figures that have become unable to act and to fulfill what used to be one of their essential requirements. The insecure and the timid give up. Fog covers an antisocial world. In his productions, Gotscheff follows the philosophy of the poor theatre, which discards the atmospheric first aid of great props. Despair and immobility, hope and failure take place in a space crossed only by wafts of mist. In this large emptiness, only the rules of chance apply and the actor must give everything. Gotscheff strips Chekhov's text of all traces of Naturalism and social life becomes a circus, a vanity fair. Although full of despair, Gotscheff's staging of IVANOV celebrates play, chance and beauty.

Since 1914, Berlin's Volksbühne has been among the most important theater establishments of the past century, playing host to some of the most influential directors, writers, actors and set designers of its day including Max Reinhardt, Erich Engel, Bertolt Brecht, Heiner Müller and Emil Jannings. Led by renegade German theater director Frank Castorf, Volksbühne continues their tradition for presenting provocative, controversial theater that tears down classical conventions and throws new light on this rarely seen work.
The Volksbühne in the centre of Berlin is one of the leading and most innovative theatres of both Berlin and Germany. It was established in 1914 as a result of a grassroots people's movement. Erwin Piscator, in the 1920s, and Benno Besson, in the 1970s, had a huge influence on the theatre. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Castorf became director-general. He turned it into perhaps the most successful, but certainly the most controversial theatre in reunified Germany.

IVANOV will perform at UCLA Freud Playhouse on December 3 - 6 at 8:00 pm and December 7 at 2:00 pm.

 

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